I am going to keep my goal setting efforts simple for the New Year. I am usually on fire with many pages of humongous goals at this time of the year. I have pages of personal goals; professional goals and we strongly encourage the Associates in our practice to share their goals in our meetings. I still believe in goals. I still wrote them down. I just kept them to 14. To be honest I got to 13 and then had to really brainstorm to come up with another. Join me in setting 14 goals for 2014. The first of the year is the best time to re-evaluate your life, your relationships, your finances and your career. Don’t just fumble around in mediocrity. Have a plan. Write it down. Set some deadlines. Make it happen. But balance your vision with humility, realism and plenty of grace for yourself.

2013 turned out to be a very difficult and humbling year for me. As always I had huge goals and high expectations. In spite of my strong faith in myself, the universe and in God things did not go as planned or hoped for at all. I suffered through a nightmarish and crippling health problem, a weight gain of 30+ pounds, low production from my staff due to family and health issues, sluggish practice referral numbers the first three quarters, financial challenges and ongoing painful conflicts in my significant other relationship. Ouch! Yes, our 4th quarter was amazing, I was able to achieve many of my financial goals, my health is 70% better, our marketing efforts have had astounding results and all indicators are pointing in positive directions for 2014. But I begin the year bruised and humbled from my struggles in 2013. Can anyone relate to that? Were there some brutal parts of 2013 that you would like to move on from and not look back at?

Here are 7 healthy principles that I encourage you to consider as you think about and then write your 14 goals for 2014. These are in no particular order…

1. Take care of your health – the old saying of “if you don’t have your health you don’t have anything” is so true. What do you need to do to insure that your body will serve you well both short term and long term?

2. Get a therapist/life coach – we all have so many blind spots that we all need all the cutting edge coaching that we can get. Imagine and athlete without a coach. If you are content not getting better then you don’t need a coach. Coaches can come in many different forms. You can get great coaching from a digital audio presentation or from say reading a blog. But do arrange for an actual human being to sit in front of you and help you to assess and measure your progress towards your healthy goals.

3. Exercise – Stephen Covey said that you need to sharpen the saw first if you are going to be effective at cutting down many trees. I'd like to take down an entire forest in 2014! I don’t think anything sharpens the mind, body and spirit more than regular intense cardiovascular exercise. If you are going to accomplish great things in 2014 you won’t do it sitting on the couch while you atrophy physically.

4. Invest in something synergetic that gives back to you – this would be things like investing in the stock market, getting deeply involved in church or another group or investing time and creativity on the Internet. Every time that I invest in the Internet it touches lives all over the world and doors of opportunity open for me. The power of the Internet takes my passion and creativity and spring boards my message into the world.

5. Find and invest heavily in your passions – what are you passionate about? You have to figure that out. It doesn’t matter what it is, it just has to be something that makes getting out of bed each morning an adventure.

6. Get healthy in your relationship – you might be able to employ the same therapist who handles your life coaching to help you with your couple work. I encourage everyone who reads this to read the classic marital growth book ‘Getting The Love You Want’ by Harville Hendrix. It is the best book ever written on marital work, in my opinion. Work with a therapist who is very familiar with the Imago Therapy that the book is based on. You will be surprised how much of a positive impact this will have on your marriage.

7. Connect with family and friends – this isn’t a ‘have to’ or ‘you really should’. When you are connected to your heart and your neediness you will just have a yearning and a hunger to reach out to and make time for your significant other, your kids and your friends.

2014 is lying in front of you to be claimed and conquered. Turn it into your own personal playground of self-actualization, courage, connectedness, hard work, joy, growth in your recovery process, development of your passions, deep in your relationship and off the charts success in your calling in life!

A friend of mine sent me this a picture/quote she took of a magazine page while waiting in a doctor's office. As far as I can tell, it originated from the great American philosopher Drew Barrymore (quoted in her interview with In Style Magazine). While I can't say for sure that she coined the phrase, it is an amazing thought filled with real life, down to earth wisdom. Life is hard. It IS a fight. What are the things in your life that defeat you? Where are you getting your butt kicked? If you don't fight with daily gritty tenacity then your life will just happen to you and it will be ultimately be a lazy, weak, addictive, undisciplined and definitely very unhappy mess. I have to fight every single day to make my body strong and lean rather its natural condition of being old and fat. Daily I have to fight lack of focus, obliviousness, over spending, arrogance, food addiction, self absorption, relationship addiction, abandonment issues and shame. Any of these issues can completely destroy a moment, a day, a week, a month, a year or the rest of my life if I allow them to. Each one of the enemies of my happiness is a formidable foe worthy of respect and much humble preventative training. I hate getting my butt kicked. It is no fun whatsoever at all! Happiness is a by product of proper, healthy goals, focus, discipline, integrity, self care, awareness, boundaries and Recovery.
The number one cause of divorce is also the number one enemy of personal happiness. Do you know what it is? If you are a regular reader you know what I am going to say. Public enemy #1 is a VICTIMY MENTALITY! Thinking like a victim is the worst kind of cancer imaginable! If your unhappiness is your husband's fault or your boss's fault or President Obama's fault then it is out of your control. You don't have the power to fix it. Thankfully the truth is that we are all the sole creators of our own destiny's and happiness. We are responsible for the condition our lives are in, nobody else! We picked our spouses. No one put a gun to our heads. We stayed in marriages that weren't meeting our needs. Your marital pain is all good! It is a golden opportunity to work on your deepest and most harmful issues. Your marital pain exposes the wounded little kid hiding under the surface of the particular role or game that you have been playing. Do not settle for an unhealthy and unhappy relationship. Get busy doing all the work that you can do on yourself. Your spouse will either get on board or you will someday cut them from your team.
Pick the top three areas that cause your unhappiness and declare war on them! Be the aggressor! Don't let the enemies of your happiness attack you and beat you down. Publicly announce your plans to defeat and dominate the top enemies of your happiness with clearly stated goals. You can do this. Don't let your life happen to you. You happen to your life! If it is your marriage that makes you unhappy book an appointment today. If your spouse isn't ready to come in don't lecture them, just keep the appointment and do your own work. If you get healthier then ultimately they will be forced to make a choice to join you in that effort or face grave consequences for not doing so.
Is it your weight that is bumming you out? Declare war of your fat jeans and your sweet tooth. Don't make any excuses. There are none. Join Weight Watchers, do P90X, join a gym, start walking daily, eliminate sugar, do whatever works for you. Picture a skinnier, happier, more gorgeous you.
Is money beating you down? This is not an easy fight, I know. To win this one you'll need a lot of fire in your belly. You will to fight your heart out to make more money, spend less money and use discipline in moving it to all the right places. Being victorious with money equals freedom rather than being in bondage. Being overweight is being in bondage. Being unhappily married is being in bondage. For most of us, the answers are not to get divorced, to get Bariatric surgery or to win the lottery. I have observed people getting divorced in order to find someone better to love them then marry basically the same person and end up in an even worse state of unhappiness. I have observed clients who received successful Bariatric surgery only to immediately have an affair, get divorced and ruin their lives even more. We have all heard stories of people who won the lottery but ultimately put themselves in worse financial situations then they were in before they won millions. It isn't about the destination. Happiness is all about the journey! I'll say it again... Happiness is a by product of proper, healthy goals, focus, discipline, integrity, self care, awareness, boundaries and Recovery. By 'Recovery' I mean knowing the truth about you, your childhood, your parents, your addictions and your issues. It is knowing the truth about who you are and where you same from and then committing to a program of addressing those issues systematically and successfully. This almost always requires therapy. Get you some!
How bad to you want to be happy? How bad do you want to be remarkable? You will need to fight for everything that you get in this life. Those are the rules. Now, what are you going to do about it?
Check out the March 17, 2012 episode of 'Unfaithful' on the Oprah Winfrey Network featuring one of talented therapists Christy Aloisio, MSW! Isn't that awesome! The OWN original series "Unfaithful: Stories of Betrayal," features couples who share their intensely personal stories of the ultimate betrayal in marriage. Intensely honest and revealing, this series illustrates how couples can come to terms with infidelity and share their stories of betrayal. For more information click to visit Oprah's website.

You might have seen this quote recently on Facebook from an anonymous source. It has been bouncing around the Internet quite a bit. I thought that it had some solid possibilities so I thought that I would give it the Mark Smith treatment this week...."If you're not being treated with love and respect, check your price tag. Perhaps you have marked yourself down. It's YOU who tell people what you're worth by what you accept. Get off the clearance rack and get behind the glass where they keep the valuables! Bottom line: value yourself more! If you don't, no one else will! Re-post if you like. You may help someone get off the CLEARANCE RACK!!!" -Quotes of Advice (Facebook)
We believe what we do about ourselves due to programming that goes way back in time and way deep in our psyches. While the Facebook quote has a lot of wisdom, it is a whole lot more complicated than just reading the quote and then immediately valuing your self enough to then live a happily transformed life. Change starts with profound insight. We first need to objectively see who we are and where we're at, even if that information is painful and depressing. The TRUTH hurts, but seeing it and accepting it is the beginning of your recovery. Where in your life have you exiled your self to the clearance rack? Are you settling for crumbs in your relationship? Are you working for peanuts at your job? Have you allowed your body to morph into something unattractive and clearance rack worthy? You see, you don't just need to change how you think about your clearance rack status, you also need to do some hard work on yourself to greatly improve the value of the product to earn actual real life status as a genuine highly valuable and sought after item. You will need to go into some serious and single minded training in order to get off the clearance rack and get behind the glass with the valuables.
If your relationship is broken, unfulfilling, dysfunctional, disrespectful and otherwise not meeting your needs then you need to go into training called therapy with a personal trainer called a therapist. It doesn't matter if your significant other is not willing to come with you. You problem is you. You can get to work on yourself without your sweetie being in the room. Your relationship unhappiness is rooted in your childhood woundedness. Nature always brings spouses and lovers who are a hidden version of our parents' most hurtful qualities. That is brutal but I guarantee you that it is the God's honest truth. You can't get someone who is better unless you first get better. You can't spill over and impact your spouse into them getting better unless you first get better yourself. This intensive training program includes many tears, deep psychological probing, reading therapy books, group therapy, couple work, high therapy bills, time devoted to reflection, special time set aside for investing in your marriage, etc. It might mean a separation. It might mean ending a relationship. It isn't easy. It hurts. We want to curl up in our warm, seemingly safe little world of denial and pretend our problems away. Want more for yourself, yes. Believe in yourself, yes. Dream big relationship dreams, yes. But your getting off the relationship clearance rack will also require excruciating training in healing your childhood wounds, learning to set healthy boundaries, eliminating numbing addictions, resolving bitter old conflicts, learning to be non-reactive in a fight and developing a great many healthy relationship skills that you currently do not possess.
If you want to get off the clearance rack of an under functioning career then you are also going to have to go into training. Yes, believe in your self. Yes, set higher goals and see yourself as more valuable. But then you might need to go back to school and get an additional degree. You will need to greatly improve your passion, your performance and your skill set. Just know this - you are on the career clearance rack not due to the economy, or due to a boss you didn't like you or due to bad luck. As in all other areas of life, you are on the clearance rack due to you own choices. You are your career problem and you are your career solution. How bad do you want to be successful? Ask your boss what you can do to better serve your company and to get better at your job. Listen to personal development CD's, go to workshops, read books about your field, put more hours in and be more intense at your work when you are there. You can have anything that you want in life. You just have to want it really bad.
If you are going to get off the clearance rack physically you need to get a trainer and you need to get to work. My mirror and my scale were conspiring to communicate a lot more truth to me about my body than I wanted to know. Why do so many of us walk around with so many unattractive, destructive and unnecessary pounds? I recently hired an amazing trainer. He has promised to change my body, my life and my future in 90 days. His gym materializes in my space every single day. He makes painful workouts fun. His name is Tony Horton and his program is P-90X. You might have heard of it. I love it after week one. I couldn't do much of the yoga yet though. I am determined to get my fat, out of shape 52 year old ass off the clearance rack. I am willing to pay a price. Getting better costs a lot. Being average or below average is easy.
Wanting more and better for your self is awesome. Go get your self a challenging therapist, wise mentors and a rocking trainer and with massive intention and hard work you will gain the direction, growth, healing, transformation and skills to become the healthiest, happiest, most successful, best looking you possible. You will never be anywhere near the clearance rack ever again. Others will value you more because you have cared enough for yourself to invest so much in yourself that you have made yourself indispensable at work, highly sought after in love and a beast in the mirror and on the scale. There is a senergy to getting healthier. When you get healthier in one area you gain the self-esteem, the energy, the focus and the confidence to get to work making the rest of your life better and healthier. Bring it!DOWNLOAD Mark Smith's 66 Page FREE Illustrated PDF File E-Book The BASICS for a Healthy Life and Marriage. Understanding the Basics of Codependency, Shame, Abandonment, Intimacy and Communication is vital in building healthy lives and marriages. Mark Smith covers these topics and more in his edgy, informal, likeable style.